-.- you’ve just described a significant portion of my home remodeling….

-.-

I think I need to learn new skills…

Have literally never seen that sub tag used in any way but as an insult, but alright, I’ll take your word for it.

Haha, I totally understand. I don’t trust those guides at all.

I’m a language lover myself (I like learning, but after trying for many years with multiple languages, I’m not super into practice ;) so I learn about how languages work instead!) and if there’s anything I’ve learned about language it is this:

It does not matter how you sound or what you actually say as long as the message you intended to get across actually gets across to whomever you mean to hear it. If people mispronounce, it is usually either regional (and thus correct for them) or something they read and have never heard anyone say. If they use the wrong word but it’s kinda right, they are probably language learners.

This was galvanized for me when I took an art history class as a general education credit in college. I learned that clerestory is pronounced clear-story. I’d only ever read the word before that, and thought it was more in line with modern patterns to be CLE-rest-ory, which is embarrassingly wrong. I’d been reading it that way for years.

Your sister sounds like a language prescriptivist, and they are always wrong, because language simply doesn’t work like that.

That’s just rude. I like knowing random things and sharing them with people. I have a literal degree built around doing that. You don’t have to think I’m being genuine if you don’t want to, but this is my experience.

I wouldn’t either, and I’m one of the people who knows me.

It has gotten to the point where the people I know just wholly believe almost everything I say, unless I preface or follow up with “I’m pretty sure that’s right but now I’m gunna double check” (and if I’m wrong because of new info, or I misremembered something, I totally own it, and read the correction from someone else out loud)

I could so very easily horribly mislead all the people I know, because I’m a random information machine, but I almost never say things I’m not entirely sure about without the preface or follow up combined with actively looking it up and setting the record straight. If I turned evil, it would take them years to realize it was intentional.

New people are fun. They challenge me a lot on things I don’t need to preface or follow up. Never works out that well for them, but we get to learn about each other!

Good reason to be an ex.

I have a greenworks push mower and I can clearly hear the birds while I’m mowing.

It’s not the most powerful thing, but it does the job really quietly.

I just say the following every time:

“Your mother would be so disappointed in you if she really understood what you were doing, wouldn’t she?

Ruining the lives of little old ladies, just like mama. She’s probably not well off either, right Mr scammer? I feel for you. Really I do. I’ve lived in poverty my whole life too, and it’s been a huge struggle just to get by. But me? I wouldn’t shame my family by scamming people just like us out of what little they have. My mamma raised me better than that. I’m sure yours did, too.”

I always get a reply meaning it definitely strikes a nerve, usually get some sort of bravado about how mama is proud because they bring home the money, and I just respond “if you tell yourself that enough maybe you’ll believe it someday, too!”.

But I don’t want to be totally heartless because a lot of them don’t have meaningful options, and I get that, and I’m not the ragey sort generally. Or at least I try not to be.

Fun fact:

Ye is not pronounced with entirely vowel sounds, as is often heard. Y was a thorn in middle and Early Modern English, which represented the “th” sound so it was still pronounced the.

(This was just a linguistics fun fact, in old English the thorn would have been written Þ or þ which ruins your joke, but wasn’t my intent :( )

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

Relevant bit: with the arrival of movable typeprinting, the substitution of ⟨y⟩ for ⟨Þ⟩ became ubiquitous, leading to the common “ye”, as in ‘Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe’. One major reason for this was that ⟨Y⟩ existed in the printer’s types that were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while ⟨Þ⟩ did not.[5] The word was never pronounced as /j/, as in ⟨yes⟩, though, even when so written.[6]

That’s so much worse than I imagined, I’m so sorry. Nobody should have to deal with that for security theater.

I’m imagining them having to change out the bag or… I guess bag-less bin…?

Unless this goes into a drain which is… equally super weird, actually, because it isn’t sink-shaped or anything… so now I’m imagining this super tall trash can with like a weak little drain at the bottom full of straws and bottle caps and stuff.

Those and milk bottle rings.